Vivian Horan Fine Art is pleased to present “Taos: 1960’s – Present,” opening April 27 through June 22. The exhibition includes a selection of work by artists who have continued the creative legacy of Taos from its early beginnings as an artist’s colony to the thriving artists’ community of today. “Taos: 1960’s – Present,” includes works by the late luminaries Agnes Martin, Ken Price, and Dennis Hopper, and 1960’s Southern Californian artists – Larry Bell, Price, and Ronald Davis – who brought the concerns of the mid-century Los Angeles art scene to Taos, and became pivotal influences for generations of artists working there. The contemporary artists in Taos give material form to their natural surroundings, and to their experiences living in an artists’ colony where art and life are inextricably intertwined.

Debbie Long is an artist who works with Light. You might be mistaken in thinking her medium is glass through no fault of your own; the cast glass objects she creates are in and of themselves exquisitely crafted sculptural pieces, but in actuality they are merely conduits for the light that Debbie manipulates into these otherworldly experiences that are the sum total of her work.

Debbie was Ken Price’s studio assistant for many years and that long apprenticeship has paid off in spades. Although Debbie is certainly linked to Price’s creative lineage which includes artists Larry Bell and Ron Cooper among a few others, her work defies simplistic definition, nor can it really be compared to the aforementioned artists except in terms of their exploration of light.

This is art made from dreams. Dreams, but also dedication, discipline and hard work. A poetic inner vision made crystalline and manifest. Deep water and deep space converge here in these installations with their alien yet inexplicably familiar forms that capture, refract and reflect the light Debbie bends and shapes.

Light as we know, travels in the form of a wave – white light contains every colour in the visible spectrum – and with these pieces Debbie has somehow conjured a way to capture these waves as they travel faster than our eyes can see, to confine them in these fragile vessels that will contain them for as long as they remain unbroken.

Her Naima piece, a chamber of amethyst light inside a rusty old trailer, where hundreds of handmade cast glass objects collect light from the sun, transforming the interior as the fiery orb moves across the sky, was built for High Desert Test Sites 2013, an exhibition curated by David Hickey, Andrea Zittel, Libby Lumpkin and Aurora Tang, where the artist’s projects were sited in the desert along the I – 40 from Los Angeles to Albuquerque. The NaimaTrailer was sited in the Mojave Desert near Joshua Tree.

Debbie describes her work as a slow read, an apt analogy. Whilst visiting her huge new studio last week, where Naima is installed, I sat for a while inside another light chamber she has built into the underneath of her sleeping loft. Amber light shifted and became golden, then deeper shades of tortoiseshell as I relaxed, looked up, felt washed by waves of warmth flowing inward from without – or was it the other way around? In that tight space that could have just as easily felt utterly claustrophobic, I experienced a moment of transcendence beyond colour, beyond verbal description. It was as if a deep thirst had been quenched.

I came out of the little enclosed cubicle into the large, open room she works in. An assortment of amethyst glass objects were grouped on a table along one wall. They glowed with such intensity after the gentle golden light I’d just been bathed in, it was difficult to look at them for too long.

I crossed the room and stared out of a high window watching a few birds gather on the bare branches of a tree. I glanced down at the big table that serves as her desk, covered with papers, sketches, books and other bits and pieces of a meaningful life in progress and noticed a torn scrap of lined paper peeking out of a pile. I had to walk around the table to read what was written on it.

“What makes the desert beautiful,” says the little prince, “is that somewhere it hides a well.” (From The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

My studio featured in BBC Culture coverage of Art Studio America, a new book about American Artists in their studios, with Debbie Long, Marina Abramovic, Glen Ligon, Chuck Close, Jeff Koons, Alex Katz, John Giorno, Bill Viola, and Laurie Simmons.

"American Artists Pictured in Their Studios"

Article by Rebecca Laurence

Photo of Debbie Long in her New Mexico Shipping Container Studio by Robin Friend

Naima is a jeweled chamber of purple glass and light hidden inside an abandoned-looking 1970s travel trailer. Naima was selected by Dave Hickey, Libby Lumpkin, Andrea Zittel and Aurora Tang for High Desert Test Sites 2013, where artists' projects will be sited in the desert along the I-40 from Los Angeles, CA. to Albuquerque, NM.

We arrived in the Mojave with the Naima trailer after a long drive through the desert between New Mexico and California. Our site for Naima and High Desert Test Sites was a sprawling dry lakebed surrounded by a ring of low hills. We drove around the lakebed all afternoon searching for the perfect spot for Naima, unhitched the trailer, and camped for the night. We were in the most spare and wild desert spot. The sky was a huge bowl covering the lakebed. At night I was surprised by shooting stars.

The next day we were hit by a dust and windstorm that lasted two days. We camped in the desert, dust filling the air and all our gear. At night it was cold and gritty. We started to install Naima with the wind rocking the trailer. We stacked the 150 cardboard boxes filled with glass for Naima inside a tent. The wind finally stopped and I settled in to being out in the elements. We camped out for a week installing Naima.

It's amazing how much more you notice the sky and the light and the cycles of day and night camping out in the desert. I forget or ignore them in the city. I got to see over and over how dramatically the light inside Naima changed at different times of day - sunset, high noon, and even at night under moonlight, which was a surprise. Thank you to all the intrepid people who braved the desert roads and waited in the hot desert sun to see Naima at High Desert Test Sites.